


the ghost of you

by melsandre



Series: i know the end (a collection of one shots) [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/F, Lauren Reynolds is there too, ladies we are in soft hours, not sad but it has lots of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25052914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melsandre/pseuds/melsandre
Summary: reader met emily prentiss (as lauren reynolds) when she was on an undercover operation that followed a similar path to emily's with jtf-12. they fell in love despite lauren's manufactured relationship to doyle, but things fell apart when doyle was arrested and the most the reader ever heard was the lauren had died. she continued to work for the cia after that particular operation had ended until she was transferred to the fbi. she reunites with her once-dead lover again when she is chosen to join the bau.
Relationships: Emily Prentiss/Reader
Series: i know the end (a collection of one shots) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1814539
Kudos: 99





	the ghost of you

**Author's Note:**

> this is set half during emily’s time spent with jtf-12 as lauren reynolds and half sometime around season 7 after emily has returned to the bau after faking her death. listen to the night we met by lord huron (the version ft. phoebe bridgers) while you read this and weep. also, listen to stay down from boygenius. naturally, this is dedicated to izzy rogers cult – i love you bitches.

_8 Years Ago_

Lauren pressed a sweet kiss to the curve of your neck, fingers raking through your hair. You stretched languidly against her, a contented sigh tumbling from your lips. Her other hand drifted across your stomach, beneath your shirt, tracing the lines of your abdomen. She pressed another kiss at the spot where your throat met your jaw, loosening another sigh from your chest, and mumbled something intelligible before burying her face against your shoulder. Lauren was solid, real, honest. She was beautiful, more beautiful than you thought should be humanly possible; Every sharp, striking angle was met with the softness of her hair, her eyes, her hands as they trailed across your skin, her lips when she kissed you.

Ian Doyle was gone for the week – something about transferring a cache of weapons from somewhere in Russia to Brussels, Belgium. He liked to personally oversee the larger transfers like this one, a desire mostly derived from his lack of trust in people. This meant that you could actually (blissfully) spend time with Lauren uninterrupted. She was, you knew, with Doyle, but she had assured you more than once that it was more business than pleasure, at least to her. Your relationship to Doyle was completely professional and your cover was that of a multi-million dollar heiress with conveniently helpful connections. You were spending time in France for the year, thus spent a frequent amount of time at Doyle’s mansion discussing business deals over dinners and lunches. If the staff suspected the nature of your relationship to Lauren, which you were fairly certain none of them did, they kept their mouths shut.

At present, you were both in the gardens, soaking in the fresh warmth of the afternoon. Lauren had been reading to you, some French novel, the title of which you had already forgotten. Her voice had lulled you into deep relaxation and she had gotten distracted as you burrowed deeper against her, setting the novel aside in favor of pressing idle kisses across your temple, jaw, throat. Now, you twisted in Lauren’s arms, curling further into her, resting your forehead against her cheek. The hand that had been spread across your stomach moved to hold your waist firmly, drawing you closer.

The ease you felt with her had been entirely unfamiliar at first, almost terrifying. Most people were not interested in getting close to an emotionally unavailable CIA agent who spent at least half of her time abroad on classified operations, so real relationships were scarce. There had been a raw sort of attraction between the both of you almost immediately, but the emotional intimacy came later. That came in quiet, starlit admissions and delicate conversations spoken into the early morning sun. It came in hours-long walks away from Doyle and the echoing emptiness of his mansion, in trips into the city that often ended with Lauren falling into your bed and holding you close in every way that mattered until the world tumbled into darkness. Despite all the lies – your name, your profession, your family – you found yourself revealing more and more genuine truths the longer you spent in her embrace. You never blew your cover, much as you were tempted, but when you told her about your past it was a real-life you spoke of, not the one fabricated for you by the CIA.

_Present_

You had just been transferred from counterintelligence to the BAU – you had begun working for the FBI’s counterintelligence unit about four years after Lauren had disappeared. Four years after the undercover operation that had left you uncharacteristically off-balance had ended. The CIA had called you back with nothing more than a message left at your handler’s drop site and you had boarded the next flight to Dulles. It was better if you left your questions unanswered, prodding often brought nothing more than administrative meetings with your superiors and not so gentle warnings to leave things alone. So, you left, left Doyle and Lauren, and that mess of arms dealers and terrorists. Your high rank and impressive classification level within the CIA allowed for a rather smooth transfer (the FBI had, after all, nearly begged for you) and you had been designated a Supervisory Special Agent within a mere few months. The FBI was easier most of the time. You were no longer pretending to be some shell of a person to insert yourself among arms dealers and infiltrate European terrorist cells, no longer had to shove your actual self back into some cramped crawl space in your mind. You missed Lauren though, grieved her, and thought about her enough that your government-mandated shrink would have called it unhealthy.

The sharp pinging of the elevator doors startled you out of your oh so brief moment of self-reflection: sixth floor. Sucking in a breath, you attempted to convince yourself that the weird feeling in your chest was something other than nerves. This was a big deal, the BAU was a big deal. It was obviously one of the most well-respected, legendary units within the FBI, and being asked to join the team was an incredible compliment, one that you weren’t certain you could live up to.

A blonde agent was half-seated on one of the desks smiling rather brilliantly at something the woman in front of her had said, while the scrawny, mousy-haired agent spinning in the chair beside the blonde flicked a balled-up piece of paper in her direction. There was something heartbreakingly familiar about the darker haired woman but it was something you could not place. Something about the strength she held in her shoulders and the curve of her spine made you think of stolen moments in a French villa and kisses pressed in shadowed corridors. That was impossible because death is death and you had learned that daring to hope was a dangerous thing.

“Agent y/l/n?” the blonde agent lit up with something like recognition as she caught sight of you. Perhaps it was the way you carried yourself, uncomfortable, new, but inspired or the way you hovered a little too close to the entrance.

You let a breath fall from your lips as you looked up at her and nodded. She smiled gently and pushed herself off of the desk she had been seated upon. The male agent beside her twisted his focus to you and the dark-haired agent stood up as the blonde passed her.

“I’m Jennifer Jareau, but you can call me JJ.”

You graciously returned her smile, “I’m –”

“Willa?”

JJ’s face screwed up in confusion. You blinked, suddenly overcome with the urge to vomit or pass out or both at the quiet sound of the voice you had nearly forgotten. Lauren. Somehow finding the wherewithal to move, you peeled your eyes from JJ’s sweet face, turning towards the woman who had spoken. She was stock-still, petrified where she stood, half-gaping at you. She was older and her hair was different (short and straight, closer to black than brown), but it was her, risen from the dead. You wobbled in a disconcerting surge of dizziness. She was alive.

"What the fuck." Your shock wrote itself plainly across your face and you choked back a sob that bubbled in your throat, “Lauren?”

“Yes, well no,” she corrected awkwardly, “I’m Emily.”

“I’m not really Willa, I’m y/n." The stars that had crept into the corners of your vision starting to fade. Lauren, no Emily, canted her head in something like bewilderment, an expression so reminiscent of the time you had spent together that it nearly made you cry.

“Y/n,” she tested your real name in her mouth.

“I was undercover with the CIA for nearly seven years,” you offered weakly by way of explanation.

She nodded slowly, “CIA? I was on a joint task force, CIA and Interpol, but most of my team members were Interpol and we coordinated primarily with them.”

“Laur,” you stopped yourself, “Emily. You’re… you died.” It was meant to be a question but the statement fell flatly from your lips. You had healed, you had fixed yourself and stopped throwing half-empty glasses of Stoli at the walls of your apartment every time the hurt got too bad. You had stopped reeling every time you saw a woman who looked like her, stopped shutting down every time someone brought up France or you were asked to speak about the operation. You had healed and now she was here. She was breathing and alive and standing directly in front of you, looking at you so warmly that you thought you might shatter.

Emily let out a low breath, guilt coloring her features. “I know. I’m,” she sighed, “I’m so sorry. I had no idea that you were… and I couldn’t.”

The male agent, who you had forgotten was standing beside JJ, interrupted her apology, “you know each other?” He stared at the pair of you in confusion, eyes wide and face scrunched like he was trying to piece together some complex equation.

Emily supplied a firm and helpful, “yes," when you fell silent.

JJ looked between the two of you, felt the tension that hung thick in the air, and tugged on his sleeve to capture his focus, “Spence, maybe we should go find Morgan.” He spared another glance at you before he nodded belatedly, trailing behind her as she walked out of the space.

It was then that Emily let her eyes flicker briefly across the bullpen. A wave of self-consciousness flooded your senses as you followed her gaze and were reminded of the number of agents who currently stood witness to your reunion with your once-dead lover.

“Come with me,” she said.

You obediently followed her to the conference room that you guessed functioned as the primary meeting space. She gestured for you to shut the door as she stepped across the room to shut the blinds. Watching her cross the space was suffocating – memories of Lauren padding across the floorboards of your apartment, swathed in the morning sun, brown eyes shining with the unspoken love that floated between you, shoved their way to the forefront of your mind with such force you felt like you could burst.

“Emily, I don’t know how to do this.” She looked back at you then, eyes searching. “I mourned for you. I grieved for years, Emily, I fell apart. It took two CIA shrinks and three years to put me back together.” You dug the nails of your right hand into your other forearm, desperately trying to hold onto some semblance of control. “What I felt for you was always real. I loved you. I still love you, I think. But it hurts, Emily.”

You kept your focus on her hands as she twisted them anxiously at her side; You were terrified of what you might find if you looked back into her face and even more terrified that you would lose it altogether. The two of you stood in silence for a long moment, the weightiness of your painfully honest admission saturating the air.

“I love you too,” she murmured, so quietly that you might have missed it. And then, louder, with her hands stretching towards you “come here, please.”

Maybe it was weak to cave so easily, to fall so unabashedly into her touch again, but you didn’t particularly care. You immediately nestled into the crook of her neck, twining your arms around her soundly. Emily scraped her fingers through your hair, her other arm finding a steady hold around your waist, fingers brushing over the bare skin below the hem of your shirt. You almost instinctively pressed a delicate kiss against the base of her throat and she placed one every so lovingly on your temple. It felt like dying and coming back to life in a single swift breath. The love that you had shoved down into the pit of your stomach for nine years swelled and blossomed across your chest.

Time passed and stretched in a comfortable haze until you weren’t certain how long you had been standing in her arms. She had pulled you closer, the hand on your waist was now splayed across the curve of your back beneath your top and the hand scraping through your hair now cradled your jaw with a gentleness that knocked the breath from your lungs. Her touch, her affection was better than you remembered, more tender, more stirring.

“Y/n,” she said, splintering the silence you had settled into.

You mumbled a response into her skin before lifting your head to look at her properly. The sudden closeness was startling. You heard her breathing deepen as you stared at her lips a moment too long before tearing your gaze upward to meet her eyes, they had darkened with a dangerous combination of desire and profound affection. The hand at your jaw was more solid now like she was holding you in place, and her thumb came to brush across the height of your cheekbone.

“Emily,” her name floated on an exhale.

Emily was too busy watching you intently to verbalize an actual response but made a soft sound of acknowledgment when you said her name. You let your fingers drag across her temple, down the plane of her cheek. She intuitively tugged your face closer to hers and you watched her tongue dart out across her lips. Every coherent thought you had melted away when you surged forward, pressing a warm kiss against her lips, eyes fluttering shut. She sighed against you and kissed you back, hurried, feverish, and needy. Your senses were flooded with all of the things you had missed for so terribly long: the taste of her mouth, the heat of her skin beneath your fingertips, the sweet little noises of want that she made. You clawed at the nape of her neck in some desperate attempt to bring her even closer, keening against her mouth as your unbidden tears splashed across her cheeks.

After a blissful, affecting minute, you pulled away reluctantly, breathlessly, and she whined faintly in protest, her lips chasing after yours.

“Emily, we have to...” Your heart felt like it was convulsing in your chest, erratic and wild. “We need to talk about this.”

She appraised you carefully as she tried to formulate a response; You smiled at her tenderly then, in understanding reassurance. Her hand slid smoothly down the length of your arm from where it had caressed your jaw and she tangled her fingers through yours, squeezing solidly, tethering herself to you. You felt the slight trembling of her wrist, saw the quiver that flicked across her mouth, the desire that pooled in her eyes. She was guarded, you knew. She always had been. While you both had the unhealthy tendency to compartmentalize, it was Emily who kept her emotions clutched tightly to her chest. 

“I want you,” she finally said, “I need to be with you.”

“Okay,” you said. 

She looked up at you through her lashes, voice thick with insecurity. "I'm not very good at this." 

"Okay," you repeated and yanked on your intertwined hands, drawing her towards you with such force that she practically fell into you as you crashed your lips against hers. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on Twitter @aiexbiakes and buy me a coffee if you're feeling nice because I really am a college student just trying their best: https://ko-fi.com/alexblakes <3


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